1. Field of the invention
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for processing input data in various application programs.
2. Description of the Related Art
An apparatus is known in the art which includes a plurality of devices such as a scanner for sensing an image of a document, a printer for outputting a recorded image, a communication unit for transmitting and receiving data, and a database unit for storing and managing the data in the form of a file, whereby the data is processed as required.
In this technique, data is processed by an application program selected from a plurality of application programs such as a scan processing program, print processing program, etc., depending on the process requested by a user.
For example, when a facsimile operation is requested by a user via a user interface, a facsimile program, which is one of the application programs stored in a memory of an apparatus, is called and executed. The facsimile program called in response to the user""s request performs a facsimile process with a scanner for scanning the image of a given document and with a processing system for compressing and decompressing data.
As described above, any process associated with the facsimile transmission is performed by the facsimile application program. For example, when there are a plurality of documents to be scanned, the facsimile program controls the operation of scanning the plurality of documents. When a plurality of documents are scanned, it is generally difficult to predict the number of documents to be scanned before starting the scanning operation and thus the facsimile application program requires a complex procedure. When the apparatus has a large number of functions, the scanner is also used by other application programs, and thus these application programs are required to perform a similar complicated procedure in the scanning process. As described above, a complicated procedure for scanning a document is included in an overlapped fashion in each of a plurality of application programs which use the scanner or a similar device.
Inside the apparatus, there are provided a semiconductor memory and a hard disk serving as media for storing the data to be processed. The storage areas of such a medium are shared by various application programs. However, there is a difference in operation speed between the semiconductor memory and the hard disk, and thus the operation speed of the application program varies depending on which storage medium is employed. For example, in applications in which all documents are first scanned and then the data is processed, a high operation speed is not required. However, in this case, a large storage space sufficient to store the data is required. On the other hand, in applications in which document image data is immediately transmitted while scanning a document, processing is required to be performed at a sufficiently high speed to achieve required performance, although the required storage space is not great.
Thus, to properly process input data, it is required to properly control the method of accessing the storage media depending on the process.
It is an object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for processing data without encountering the problems described above.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for processing data, capable of processing input data in various applications wherein the process is performed in a highly efficient manner depending on the application.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for processing data wherein a process which is common to a plurality of applications is performed by a common program.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for processing data, capable of storing input data in a properly selected storage device depending on the process.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide a method and apparatus for processing data, capable of storing input data in a properly selected manner depending on the process.